Robert looked up, stupefied, as Hugh Flaxman entered. But he sprang up with his old brightness.
'Well, this is friendship! What on earth brings you here, old fellow? Why aren't you in the stubbles celebrating St. Partridge?'
Hugh Flaxman said what he had to say very shortly, but so as to make Robert's eyes gleam, and to bring his thin hand with a sort of caressing touch upon Flaxman's shoulder.
'I shan't try to thank you—Catherine can if she likes. How relieved she will be about that bothering journey of ours! However, I am really ever so much better. It was very sharp while it lasted; and the doctor no great shakes. But there never was such a woman as my wife; she pulled me through! And now then, sir, just kindly confess yourself a little more plainly. What brought you and my sisters-in-law together? You need not try and persuade me that Long Whindale is the natural gate of the Lakes, or the route intended by Heaven from London to Scotland, though I have no doubt you tried that little fiction on them.'
Hugh Flaxman laughed, and sat down very deliberately.
'I am glad to see that illness has not robbed you of that perspicacity for which you are so remarkable, Elsmere. Well, the day before yesterday I asked your sister Rose to marry me. She——'
'Go on, man,' cried Robert, exasperated by his pause.
'I don't know how to put it,' said Flaxman calmly. 'For six months we are to be rather more than friends, and a good deal less than fiancés. I am to be allowed to write to her. You may imagine how seductive it is to one of the worst and laziest letter-writers in the three kingdoms that his fortunes in love should be made to depend on his correspondence. I may scold her if she gives me occasion. And in six months, as one says to a publisher, "the agreement will be open to revision."'
Robert stared.
'And you are not engaged?'